The personal spaces that Lockwood usually release are sometimes sleek, modern and edgy in design and sometimes they are magical, wonderful places that make your imagination run wild. Then, there’s 921 Acacia Drive.

I’m not really certain what they were thinking with this space. Well, to be honest, I have a slight idea and I’ll explain later.

Welcome to the neighborhood, friend.

This is supposed to be a suburban family home. When you enter for the first time and you look outside the windows you’ll see a white picket fence in the front yard and think to yourself “How quaint.” Then you notice the other houses and that they are all painted some blue-green 1970’s color. Either there was a huge sale on blue-green paint and everyone in the neighborhood were in desperate need to paint their houses or they have a severely strict Home Owners Association. There is something a little creepy about the cookie cutter perfection out there. Then you explore the inside of the house and the creepiness poured its way inside. Hell, even the name Acacia Dr. is a bit creepy and now that I think about it, I’m being reminded of Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh, I just came up with a decorating idea.

Let’s explore the space, shall we?

The first floor has six rooms. A giant open foyer/living room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen and a couple of others that could be a study or bedroom. The bathroom on the first floor is prefurnished with a toilet, shower and sink. You can’t move these at all and they really seem too small for the room as they don’t fill it up at all, so you will need to add something more to it. Also I noticed that there are sconces along the walls in all the rooms but in this bathroom the sconce is above the toilet and kind of hovers away from the wall not connected to anything. Not sure what that’s all about.

The floating sconce.

The bottom floor is huge. In fact I think you would be hard pressed to make each room look full while decorating it. And this space is marketed as a “Decorators Dream”? 100 items will not make this space look full. And there are items built-in that wont allow you to place things where you want them. If you don’t like the toilet and shower in the bathroom, oh well…you’re stuck with it. Same goes with the kitchen…what the Hell is going on with that? There’s an island cabinet stuck in the middle of a large room that may or may not be the kitchen. Then there are bottom cabinets along one side of the room. They seem out-of-place especially when you go into the adjacent room and see more of them along with a sink in there. Is that room supposed to be the kitchen? Is there two kitchens? Or is it a pantry? I don’t know. I do know that the cabinets preset in the space do not match the cabinet I received as a reward from the space and neither do the cabinets that came with the pack I bought.

A “Decorators Dream.”

Going upstairs there are 4 rooms. A massive bathroom that is empty (no preset furniture) two bedrooms and a playroom. I guess it’s a playroom…either that or another bedroom but you’ll have to go through a bedroom to get to it and since it’s connected to what appears to be the child’s room, then I’ll call it the playroom.

Stay calm and just watch the stars on the ceiling.

The child’s room is probably the best looking room through out the whole house and could have been a stand alone apartment. It has a really nice light display on the ceiling of stars. And the wallpaper is totally unique and different from the rest of the house with its whimsical trees on it. You could easily fill up your 100 slots in this room alone. But that proves to be another problem with decorating since this is a child’s room and we really don’t have that many children items or toys to decorate with.

But screw decorating it because it doesn’t have a frigging spawn point! So, you want to get a nice sized bed in there? Screw it. Want to get a large rug in there? Not gonna happen. This is when I quit and left the space disgusted. This is my favorite room in the whole dirty, dingy, ugly house and I can’t even decorate it the way I want.

Also…you are forced to place wall hangings around. Unless you want to look at dark markings of where frames used to be. The people that lived in this house before us must have been heavy smokers. Or really bad housekeepers. Either way…it all points back to this supposedly being a decorators dream but everything so far has been a decorators nightmare. It certainly does pose a lot of challenges for decorators. Maybe that’s the dream?

This space really has a lot of issues and questions I can’t explain but I’ll tell you what I think of it.

Can’t wait to see this space reskinned.

I think that this space sat on someone’s hard drive, waiting. I think that it was created and never released because it has that 2009 feel to it (the graphics and textures). It really looks and feels like something developed back in 2009 and for whatever reason it was never released. Maybe it was never finished or deemed not good enough to be released (I lean to the later). Someone probably was digging around, pulling out old stuff and found it. Decided that it was good enough now to sell. And to make it more appetizing to people…because, yeah, by itself you’d be more hesitant to buy it…throw in furniture bundles with it. But not new, never before seen furniture, no, old furniture bundles. This is a Fire Sale, a last-minute, ditch effort to make money and get rid of inventory.

The decorators dream is dead.

Pros of this space:

1. It has built-in furniture.

2. It’s nice sized.

3. If you want or need furniture then the packs are for you, there’s a lot in them for the price.

Cons of this space:

There’s just something “off” with that house.

1. It has built-in furniture. The screwy cabinets in the two rooms and the first floor bathroom.

2. Everything looks dingy. Dirty stained wallpaper.

3. The creepy blue-green houses outside, especially the one that you can see from the upstairs bathroom. The windows are all out of alignment.

4. That creepy hovering sconce in the first bathroom.

5. No spawn point in that children’s room. This is the best space in the whole house and it’s useless.

6. The cabinets being obtained as the rewards do not match the built-in ones.

7. The dryer reward is out of scale with everything and actually looks like a washer. Is it supposed to be a washer? It’s top loaded!

8. Screw it…this space is just awful. Don’t waste your money with it unless you truly want that furniture. This is definitely the worst space I currently own. I regret buying it and I would almost pay them to take it out of my inventory.

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About Stryctnin

Stryctnin is the Co-Founder of PSHG and writer/designer. He resides in Richmond, Va where he draws, paints and writes fiction. His avatar and gamer ID are of one of his created characters. He collects comic books and action figures. He has a massive Transformer collection. He prefers Star Trek over Star Wars. He is an avid video gamer and PSN trophy hunter.

3 Comments

To be fair, we had a review last week where the writer loved it. But Stryctnin addresses a lot of the issues. To be honest, I loved the space… but the no spawn point in the one bedroom was a dealbreaker for me. Hopefully, Lockwood will update the space and fix that. If they do, I’d be more apt to buy it.

Yes I thought that the space and still think the space has potential ONLY if they update it. You cannot o into the backyard or the frontyard, things look very lat within the home specially upstairs doors and the windows are oversized.

You saved me, Stryctnin. For once, I waited to read the reviews before buying a space, I guess because Lockwood has pulled a couple of grating boners in recent memory.
Speaking of, is memory load the reason LW has such an aversion to spawn points in every room? It seems like it’d be such a little piece of code for such a vital feature.

BTW I get the too similar houses outside [“little boxes, little boxes”] and think the dust outlines left by previous frames fit right in with the ’90’s wall torchieres. Still, the rewards sound more like shabby refuse than shabby retro. Additionally, nice heating units and wainscoting are not points of interest—like a back deck or maybe a garage door that opens—that keep it from being just another little box.

PS Because a top-loading dryer couldn’t tumble clothes, I’m guessing the front-loading glass-doored unit that looks like a washer is in fact an industrial sized margarita maker.